Blissful Ignorance

This painting was brought to my attention recently after reading the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden. Upon first seeing the painting, I had no idea how it could possibly relate to this poem about the every day normalcy that occurs right around a tragedy. Simply, the lush landscape and rich colors took my breath away. The fact that I had to search the picture for the pair of legs flailing in the right hand corner in order to see that anything was wrong here was quite a wake up call and also essentially the point of Auden’s poem.

Before I get into the implications of the poem and the painting, allow me to refresh your memory of the story of the painting’s protagonist. Icarus and his father were imprisoned by the King of Crete and could not escape by land or sea so the father of Icarus built a pair of wings out of wax and feathers for the two of them to escape. He cautioned his son to stay a safe distance from the sun, as the wax could easily melt, but after they had escaped Icarus’ love for flying took him closer and closer to the sun until his wings melted and he fell into the water and drowned.

So, here is Auden’s poem:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

To very briefly examine this poem stylistically we can see that it deviates from any formal structure or rhyme scheme. It uses formal language, but also intersperses the verse with very informal words such as “doggy.” His sudden interlude of “for instance” sets the reader in an entirely different genre of writing, as if he is switching to an argument in prose. When I first read it, I was sure this was an insert from the anthology and  no longer part of the poem. Categorizing the death as a “failure,” plays down the tragedy of the drowning in contrast with the leisure of the ploughman.  To all of these other figures in the painting, the sight and sound of the death is just a blip on the radar; they have more important things to worry about.

The contrast between the scene of suffering and the proximity of a routine untouched by this scene rings all too true to modern society. I seem to get an update to my phone every 15 minutes from BBC or CNN reporting the most recent tragedy, but like the ship I continue sailing on with whatever I’m doing. Soldiers killed – put in laundry. Woman missing – make a sandwich. Government shutdown – study for my history midterm. When I put it this way, my inaction is almost more horrifying than the scene of suffering itself. But what am I supposed to do? How can I help the victims of a cruel world from my cozy Ann Arbor home? Trust me, I’d give anything to bring justice and peace to the world, but in our times of inaction, all we can really do is reject the ploughman attitude and tune in to the sights and sounds around us, no matter how unpleasant they may be. Awareness is the first step in change and even Auden was attuned to this in 1938.

This is why we’re in school, this is why we read the news, so that one day we can give back to the world that doesn’t seem to be able to keep its head on straight. So take some time to turn away from your Facebook News Feed and turn on the news so that someday you can be the one to pull Icarus out of the water before he drowns.